Clinical studies indicate that large percentages of mobile device users are developing poor spinal posture habits from tilting their heads forward when viewing visual displays on the mobile device. The load/strain put on the spine from poor spinal posture habits leads to spinal problems, such as development of a straight cervical spine. Conventional techniques to address this problem utilize a binary approach that merely indicates on which side of a threshold the user's spinal posture is located. But the risk of bad spinal posture increases significantly below about sixty degrees and these binary approaches do not convey to users the urgency of correcting spinal posture as it deviates farther from the threshold. Other conventional approaches merely generate a small (e.g., less than 25% of the screen) notification of the user's spinal posture, which fails to induce desirable behavior from the user.
Another conventional approach includes an eyeglass-like apparatus that functions as a blinder. However, disadvantages of this approach include lack of adoption due to the apparatus not always being located nearby the user and dependence on user honesty to actually wear the apparatus. Moreover, the apparatus occludes the wearer's field of vision for all tasks while wearing the apparatus such that the wearer must manually remove the apparatus to regain full vision (e.g., for conversing with others, viewing important messages, viewing important environmental cues, etc.).